Paul and Lucy Spadoni periodically live in Tuscany to explore Paul’s Italian roots, practice their Italian and enjoy “la dolce vita.”
All work is copyrighted and may not be reprinted without written permission from the author, who can be contacted at www.paulspadoni.com

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Author Joe DiPietro presents an immigrant story from another side

Saturday, April 19
America is a country full of immigration stories about ambitious but penniless
foreigners who forsake the security of family, friends, familiar customs and a
common language to start over for the hope of making a better life for
themselves and their children. But Joe DiPietro gives this plot a thought-provoking
twist in his play “Over the River and Through the Woods,” and though it was
four years ago that I saw the production at Tacoma Little Theatre, the message
has stuck with me.

Joe DiPietro

The main character in the play has an Italian grandfather who
immigrated—against his own wishes—as a teenager to America. The grandfather,
Frank, speaks about the cruelty of his own father, who would only buy him the very
simplest of toys every year at the Christmas bazaar in their little town in
Italy. What kind of a man is so stingy that he would deny his son the merest
pleasure of having a nice toy?

“Every Christmas morning,” Frank said, “on the cobblestones in town, there
would appear this—this sea of vendors—their carts covered with toys—and what I
remember the most is the colors—bright reds and blues and oranges—like a
rainbow of toys. And my father would carry me in his arms and take me to the
first cart, and he’d point to some tiny, dark toy, while I’d point to the
biggest and most colorful, but my father would shake his head “no” and we’d
move on to the next . . . and we’d do that again and again until we had gone to
each cart. And then he’d buy me some little gray toy I barely wanted, and I’d
start crying, and he’d carry me back into our house. I always resented him for
that—hated him for that.”

And when Frank’s father finally did scrape together a few lire, what did he do with it? He put his scared 14-year-old son on
a ship to America, all alone, “and said ‘good-bye, that’s where you’re gonna
live.’ I hated him for that, too.”

Starting life from scratch in an unfamiliar country is a daunting task, but
most immigrants at least do it by choice. They realize full well what they are
doing and why. It took Frank most of his life to understand what his own
heartless father had been thinking. Frank found a good job, married and had
children of his own, though he still remembered with bitterness the hardships
he had been through first as a little boy growing up desperately poor, and then
being sent away when he was still barely out of childhood. Shortly after Frank
came to America, though, his father got tangled in a fishing net, hit his head on
the side of the boat and was never found.

“Eight years from the day he sent me away,” Frank told his grandson, “I
returned to my hometown so my mother and sisters could meet my new family. It
was during the holidays, and on Christmas morning, I took your mother in my
arms and carried her outside, and there they were—all the vendors, like they
never left—with all their blue and red and beautiful toys. And your mother
pointed to the brightest and prettiest, and any one she’d point at, I bought
for her. And when we came back in, our arms full with this rainbow of toys, my
mother took one look and said: ‘That’s what your father wished he could do! But
we barely had enough to buy food on Christmas. That’s why he had to send you
away. So you could make for yourself a life he could never give you.’ ”

Every spare centesimi his father
saved had gone to send his son to America, where he could escape the
condemnation of a life of poverty and desperation. Instead of despising his son,
as Frank had assumed, his father had loved him so much that he had been willing
to trade a life with his son and grandchildren nearby for the knowledge that he
had done the best he could do to give them a future.

“I always thought my father was a bastard who wouldn’t give me anything,” Frank
concluded. “Turns out—he was giving me all he had.”

The story is partly autobiographical, so these events likely actually occurred.
And while DiPietro came from an Italian family, the story has broader
application. In a New York Times interview, DiPietro said, “This is my family,
but it’s all ethnic groups.”

1 comment:

A moving story of what forms intended love can take. My own thoughts are I'm not sure poverty alone is reason enough to break family ties. I can understand doing so if the effects of poverty are so great that basic needs are not being met but only for that reason.

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First off, before you hassle me about our title, Lucy thought of it. Yes, I know some people may think broad is derogatory, but the etymology is uncertain and she doesn’t find it offensive, and it made me laugh. We have been married since 1974 and are empty-nesters now, which allows me to bring my submerged Italophilia into the open. We first came to live in Italy from February-April in 2011 and have returned during the same months every year. From 2011-2015, we lived in San Salvatore, at the foot of the hilltop city Montecarlo, where my paternal grandparents were born, raised and, in 1908, married. In late 2015, we bought a home in Montecarlo. We come for a variety of purposes: We want to re-establish contact with distant cousins in both Nonno’s and Nonna’s families, we want to learn the language and see what it is like to live as Italians in modern Italy, we like to travel and experience different cultures. Even if we aren’t successful at achieving these purposes, we love Italy and enjoy every moment here, so there is no chance we will be disappointed. I am grateful to God for giving me a wife who is beautiful, clever, adaptable and willing to jump into my dreams wholeheartedly.